


stay as long as you want

by westhouse



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Amateur Heroics, Burning buildings, M/M, Matt ruins Foggy's company car
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 14:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16812922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westhouse/pseuds/westhouse
Summary: Was there smoke leaking from the windows? The building was old, a derelict high-rise that he assumed was home to no one but squatters and people looking for a secluded place to do drugs. The glass had been dirty enough not to see through before, and in the middle of the night against the contrast-shattering lights of the city, he couldn’t tell.Then the windows started glowing, and he could definitely tell. (for @cabwaylingo)





	stay as long as you want

**Author's Note:**

> hey it's more mattfoggy fic! except it's really piney and stupid because matt keeps almost dying. in which foggy is not a hero and everyone feels bad about themselves for what theyve done today

Karen told him, _I don’t think you need this in your life. All you’re going to do is exhaust yourself._ That had felt true at the time, and he’d smiled and shook his head—his quiet, bad news smile, the smile that he reserved for being the messenger on the verge of being shot.

Foggy Nelson was always the messenger on the verge, and he had fought Matt Murdock through more arguments than he could count to be here: Daredevil’s emergency contact, the ironic measure being that a so-called superhero could rely on the help of a pudgy lawyer who still went by his college nickname. He hadn’t gone so far yet as to say he was fond of this whole thing, but he had to be involved somehow. He’d be staying up all night bereft with worry anyway, so why not make it his _job_ ? Not that it paid well—or at all. Not that it was any better for his mental stability. Not that he would be doing himself any favours when it came to his _actual_ , paying job, which had reminded him lately that Nelson & Murdock had not been a particularly successful law firm. But he had to do it. There was no other option.

This, of course, was an insane thing to think, and it made him sound exactly like Matt. He couldn’t stand the way they’d been going back and forth lately, never quite on good terms but still inextricably linked to each other. He’d read something once about the red string of fate. How was someone meant to _cut_ it? And if he could do that, would he finally be free of the worrying and the stressing and the sitting on this street corner like a damn stakeout cop waiting for a call?

Probably, he’d see Daredevil come out of the building and flip away into the night like some kind of coked-out gymnast, and he wouldn’t even call to check in.

Granted, this was their test run of this stupid idea, and he was only allowed to be here because there wasn’t explicit danger. Matt was looking for answers about something he wouldn’t explain in detail, and those answers were _probably_ not guarded. Foggy was there to make sure no one was going to show up, try an ambush or whatever—which seemed in retrospect like kind of a dangerous job. He didn’t feel nervous enough for it. Maybe _nothing_ scared him enough these days.

Was there smoke leaking from the windows? The building was old, a derelict high-rise that he assumed was home to no one but squatters and people looking for a secluded place to do drugs. The glass had been dirty enough not to see through before, and in the middle of the night against the contrast-shattering lights of the city, he couldn’t tell.

Then the windows started glowing, and he could _definitely_ tell.

* * *

“Matt,” he hissed in the vague direction of the receiver, “pick up the phone, pick up your _Goddamn phone._ ” A window on the top floor shattered, the heat of the fire finally breaking the limits of the glass. Foggy shoved the phone into his pocket, sure he was already freaking out—one, because the sound of the glass had inexplicably called back this image of a champagne glass broken at some Nelson cousin’s wedding, and second because he had started sprinting without realising it. His mind always fragmented like that when he was about to panic. There was no way he’d keep it together long enough to get his call through.

It occurred to him as he passed through the door that this was a stupid thing to do. Maybe Matt had already gotten out when he wasn’t paying attention. Sure, he’d been paying attention the whole time, but there was still a chance he’d left from a different exit and not called. There was even a chance that this was somehow perfectly according to plan.

There was also a chance, however, that Matt was up there surrounded by smoke and fire and debris, completely alone. Not answering his phone, because he couldn’t hear it, maybe even had dropped it. Not going to find his way out because fires were loud, and disorienting, and _dangerous._

What it came down to was that Foggy had made up his mind the second he saw the smoke.

Sense returned in stuttering thoughts and before he’d torn into the stairwell he was dropping his messenger bag onto the concrete. He dug through it for his water bottle and the scarf he’d given up on halfway through the day—insecurity was a wild beast he had never quite won against—which he then, feeling like a moron, doused. What the hell did he know about fire safety? He remembered the drill he’d been through as a kid in school, the trailer they had filled with fake smoke and flashing lights. In honesty, it had given him enough anxiety at the time that he had willfully forgotten most of the experience. All they’d told the kids was to call 911 and get out, which had been perfect advice before he was a blind vigilante’s best friend. Someone on the street would call the cops, inevitably. But when they showed up, he and Matt would need to be gone.

He tied the scarf around his mouth and nose, then shrugged his coat off. There would be a chance to go back for it, probably, but he didn’t really care. Mourning a coat would be a walk in the park compared to mourning Matt. The adrenaline was setting in at an alarming speed, and the old echo of “don’t be a hero” disappeared entirely as he started up the stairs. _God,_ he thought, _I am so incredibly fucking stupid._ Not only was he not remotely built to sprint up several flights of stairs on a normal day, but he had been anxious the entire night, and also, the fucking building was on fire. What would he do when he got up there, out of breath and exhausted? Save Matt’s life or just choke on enough smoke to get himself killed?

For his entire life, he had been an entirely mediocre guy, which had been awesome. He’d _loved_ mediocre. And now mediocre was supposed to be enough to get him up an abandoned high-rise and to a literal superhero who might be burning to death, or near it.

He didn’t bother checking the first few floors, not until he got to the point where the smoke was permeating the stairwell. He hadn’t expected it to be this _dark._ The light dimmed further and further, stinging his eyes, as he climbed, the scarf both helping him to breathe and stifling him completely. There was no way he’d make it up in time, or maybe at all.

It wasn’t clear how many floors he’d gone up before he finally broke for the door and called into the vague, smoke-shrouded silhouette of a hallway. “Matt?” He willed his racing heart to stop so he’d stop hearing it pound in his ears. The entire building seemed to be crackling and roaring, shattering glass somewhere upstairs again. “Matt!” Nothing.

Back into the stairwell he went, feeling vaguely nauseous. He had no way of knowing where Matt was or if he would’ve even heard him calling back—surely Matt would hear _him_ no matter where he was. But maybe it was too loud. There were so many possibilities contained within this burning building that he couldn’t handle thinking about them all. His chest hurt as he tore up the next set of stairs, the altitude only making the environment hotter as the world continued to darken around him.

Three more stories, no response. The fourth was getting dark. Dangerously dark.

He burst through the fifth door and nearly got thrown back by the sheer force of the heat that flooded out, eyes streaming and burning. The darkness had given way to the impossibly bright spark of the fire, which must have spread to the floor right above. There was a place down this hallway that it was burning through the ceiling, leaving a smoldering ring in the plaster that periodically shed embers. “Oh, shit,” he panted, staring wide-eyed into the open hall, where several walls between apartments had already collapsed. If he had to go up any further after this, he was fucked. But if Matt was any further up than this...

“Matt! Matt, are you in here?” Foggy took a step in, and then a few more, blinking the smoke from his eyes. There was no way in Hell he was about to catch his breath in this environment, so his only option was to keep going. To keep listening. “Matt!” He called again, his voice breaking. The blaze was so unbelievably loud that he couldn’t imagine hearing him over the roar of it, but he moved further in nonetheless, flinching when the hole in the ceiling dropped a flaming ball of _something_ from the next floor.

He was about to turn back when he heard coughing, and he wouldn’t put money on his ability to identify Matt from his cough alone, but it did sound a lot like him.

“Matt!” He yelled, now going in at a dangerous speed, trying to track down the source of the sound. “Matt, it’s me—I’m here!” Except he, too, was coughing, even into his drenched scarf. Even with the light provided by the fire, visibility was a wreck with the smoke in his eyes. He couldn’t imagine how Matt must have felt, with the sound of it all. This was disorienting even to him, and he had all of his faculties intact.

He’d made it around the hole in the ceiling when seemingly out of nowhere, Daredevil’s full weight came stumbling into his right shoulder. He was coughing again now, and the sound of it was ugly, like he’d been in here hours instead of for fifteen minutes. Foggy grabbed for him, pulling him clumsily out of the way of the fire and trying not to fall over himself. “Matt, it’s—fuck, oh my God, hey, it’s me,” he said, words tumbling out of his mouth mostly without his input. “It’s me, I’m here, I’m here to get you out.”

Matt sucked in a ragged breath and maybe tried to grab for him, but fell short, instead just kind of hitting him in the chest with an open palm. “Foggy,” he managed, voice shot, “what are you doing? You—you need to get out.” For all he had been through tonight, he sounded angry. Of course he sounded angry.

“Yeah, and I plan on it,” Foggy said, barely able to speak above the sound of the fire, “but you’re coming with me.” He steadied Matt with one hand and with the other began untying the scarf from around his face, fumbling with the knot. His entire body felt numb.

“I was fine,” Matt said, perhaps intending to snap but instead sounding raspy and lost. His hand wouldn’t leave Foggy’s chest. “I—…”

“Shut up. Yell at me later when you’re not dead,” he said urgently. “Get the mask off. Come on.” There was a weak protest, but he was already tearing it off for him. “I’m gonna cover your nose, okay? It’ll help with the smoke.”

Reluctantly, Matt complied, his eyes watery and lost. Apparently he had left Daredevil behind somewhere when the fire started, because despite the suit and the attitude he was no one but Matt Murdock now, trying desperately to stifle his fear in the face of the sensory overload which was the fire. “What about you?” He asked after a second, having caught the difference in Foggy’s voice.

“No time to put it back on, buddy,” Foggy said gently, but with a kind of conviction that said he knew what Matt would want from him. “C’mon.” He grabbed onto Matt’s arm and started pulling him back toward the stairwell, trying to fend off the awful feeling that was settling in his chest. Surely Matt had it much worse—how long had he been alone up there before he’d shown up? Did he even have what he’d come here looking for?

He had half a mind to ask what had happened to cause the fire, but he didn’t want the answer. Either something had gone coincidentally wrong or they weren’t alone in the building, which wasn’t something he wanted to consider as he stumbled down the stairs with an unmasked, frightened Daredevil behind him. A floor down the smoke started getting to him, finally, and the coughing came back in force. It was too late to be embarrassed or try to stifle it, so instead of bothering to, he just picked up the pace. He tripped down several stairs as a result, rescued only by Matt steadying him.

They went back and forth like that for a minute, it felt like, one of them urged on by the other in an effort not to stop their descent. It seemed like Matt was doing a little better with the scarf, but it had gone from drenched to damp in the time it’d taken Foggy to get up there, and it was only getting drier. And of course, in the middle of an emergency, the only reasonable thought his brain could pull together was _I’m going to make my company car smell like smoke,_ and the subsequent _Fuck, that’s gonna cost me._

His bag was still at the bottom of the stairs. “Sirens,” Matt choked out, gripping his arm. Foggy had not yet caught his breath, but was shoving the Daredevil mask into his bag and following it with his coat. He scooped the bag up onto his shoulder and kept going.

“Yeah,” he finally managed after a second, “we’re almost out.” Then they were through the door and into the smoke-filled night, the building above them smoldering. Foggy chanced a look up and found that the windows were pouring fire, the roll of it looking like an explosion caught in slow motion. They had just walked out of that. He hadn’t the faintest clue how. The cold air stung to breathe in, was now somehow more painful than the smoke, and he was beginning to feel the adrenaline wear off. What it gave way to was pain, and a lot of it. Gritting his teeth, he tried to walk faster, pulling Matt with him. “C’mon, we need to go.”

He was trying not to cough as he got to the car and hurried Matt into the passenger seat, tossing his bag into the back and then getting in himself. He could hear the sirens now, and they were only getting closer by the second. There was no time to bullshit about whether or not they were okay—which, he hadn’t seen himself yet, but Matt sure as fuck wasn’t. He started the car and between Matt’s coughs breathed, “Stay with me, buddy,” and started driving.

* * *

If there was one thing Foggy hated about Matt’s stupid vigilante thing, it was the strict _no hospitals_ rule. He had just pulled the guy out of a burning fucking building and he’d still insisted that Foggy take him back to his apartment. Nevermind the fact that he was clearly deteriorating quickly, that he was exhausted, that by the time he’d gotten to the stairs he couldn’t keep himself upright without Foggy’s help. That help wasn’t even particularly useful, because while they were probably almost the same weight, Matt was _all_ horrifying vigilante muscle.

Still, he practically dragged Matt up the stairs with him, at first muttering placating nonsense and then shutting up when he could no longer breathe to speak. He opened the door (unlocked, stupid) with Matt leaning heavily against him and made it most of the way down the hall before they both fell against the wall. Matt had left the scarf in the car, but Foggy had brought his bag inside, and he dropped it now as he tried to pull in anything that felt like clean air. Beside him, Matt was weakly starting to try and take off the Daredevil suit; it took him a moment to register that and he finally forced his voice to work again long enough to say, “I’ll get you a shirt.”

He stumbled into the bedroom, to the dresser, and was immediately faced with the image of himself in the mirror that went with it. For obvious reasons the mirror had never actually been set up, instead leaned against the wall somewhere out of the way—but he saw himself in it at a weird angle, his clothing blackened by the smoke. The backs of his hands were nearly pitch black in some places, and it looked like the smoke had somehow gotten under his nails. He didn’t want to move far enough to see his face and hair. Everything around him still smelled like smoke, and he wasn’t expecting to get rid of it.

He tugged out a sleep shirt that he knew Matt wasn’t particularly fond of and made his way back to the living room, where Matt had gotten part of the suit off and was half-curled up on the floor, shaking violently. Foggy dropped the shirt on the couch and went to him, wincing as he more or less fell to his knees beside him. “Hey,” he said, barely louder than a whisper. “Hey, hey—I’m here.” He wasn’t sure if that was comforting or not, especially not when they were both racked with leftover adrenaline and shock and fear. But Matt reached for him, one hand grabbing his shirt at the shoulder and gripping tightly. “It’s okay,” he whispered, and then, “let me help.” Surely it was a bad sign that he received no protest when he started taking Matt’s boots off, fending off the shaking of his own hands. There was no point in being here if he wasn’t going to be useful.

Trying not to say anything stupid or start coughing again, he tugged off Matt’s boots and helped him out of the rest of the suit, apologising aimlessly every time Matt stumbled or coughed. He tried to help him to the couch, but Matt told him not to, told him he didn’t want smoke on it. Foggy glanced at the suit on the ground—Daredevil, charred and blackened. “It’s a miracle you’re not burnt at all,” he said. Matt said nothing, only stood there frowning and looking fragile despite himself. “But the… the smoke’s pretty bad, buddy,” Foggy finally continued, and tried to clear his throat only to have to swallow back a sound at the pain of it. “We’d better get you cleaned up.”

“I can manage,” Matt rasped, and tried half-heartedly to break away from him.

“You passed out on me a couple times there in the car. Not leaving you alone.” He stifled a cough, but it quickly turned bad and then he was racked with a fit, one that lasted seemingly forever until he was gasping for breath and Matt was gripping his arm so tightly it hurt. “I’m okay,” he breathed, “I’m okay. Jesus. We—we need to… to get the smoke out of your hair and shit, come on.”

Apparently he had done his part in making Matt feel guilty enough to listen to him, whether or not he’d intended it. He pulled him into the bathroom and started the bathtub running. It was an ugly but functional tub, and the hot water in this building had never failed them since the first altercation that they’d had with the landlord about it. The heat was another story, so the place was on the verge of frigid, but Foggy pulled the door shut and started the electric heater in the corner. It whirred comfortingly. “You don’t need to do this,” Matt muttered, sitting on the floor and leaning his head against the cool edge of the bathtub. “You can go.”

“So you can drown in the bath?” Foggy asked, not intending to sound bitter but still sounding it. He huffed out a little laugh. “No, I don’t think so. I pulled you out of a burning building, Matt. I’ve known you for ten years. Don’t think you get to be shy.” The humidity rising in the room was making him feel at least marginally better, though not by much. His body was still weak and shaky, like he’d run a marathon or something—and he supposed that for his usual level of activity, he kind of had. Still, he forced himself up. “I’m gonna get water.”

“Okay,” Matt said, not moving from his spot on the floor.

Foggy knew Matt’s apartment like the back of his hand, probably could have navigated it with his eyes closed if pressed. He felt like he was moving completely on autopilot as he made his way to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of water. “I’m here,” he said as he came back in and closed the door. “Drink some. ‘S’good for you.” That was probably an understatement, given their night, but he nudged Matt’s arm and eased the glass into his hand. The bath kept running as they sat there on the concrete floor, downing cool water and trying to breathe through it all.

After a while the bath was mostly full and Foggy set his glass aside somewhere he wouldn’t knock it down, pushing gently at Matt’s shoulder. “The bath is full,” he said. “You can ask me to fuck off if you want, I guess. I just—I’m freaked out. I’m really freaked out and I’m trying to keep it together but I kind of need to know where you are.” He wasn’t sure if he would be able to handle it if he was asked to leave, that he wouldn’t pace himself into a panic attack in the bedroom, but he was willing to do it anyway. He was always willing.

“It’s fine,” Matt said after a second, and a minute later he was climbing into the bathtub and sitting curled up in the warm water, staring vaguely toward the wall. “How bad is it?” He asked after a minute, and seemed to preemptively wince at the answer.

“You look better than I do,” Foggy admitted, turning slightly to look at him. “Probably feel worse.” It was true that Matt was not quite as smoke-stained as he was, but that didn’t mean he’d been entirely spared. Comparatively he looked fine, but in actuality he definitely looked pretty awful. “There’s no way you’re gonna scrub all that off on your own.”

“I… couldn’t find my way through that. At all.” Matt shifted uneasily, the quiet of the room interrupted only by a brief cough from Foggy and the water shifting with him. “I’m so—Foggy, I’m so sorry I made you go in there,” he breathed after a second, all of the words tumbling over each other. “Are you okay? I should’ve asked, I just…”

“Stop,” Foggy said, without any exact harshness, instead just with this kind of uneasy sadness. “Quit it. You can worry about me later.” All things said and done, he would have much preferred to check in with actual medical professionals. He felt like shit. But the water and the steam from the bath had helped somewhat, so he clearly wasn’t going to die—he hoped, anyway. “Just… Can I help you? You’re stressing me out.” If he was physically able to, he might have held his breath a second, made a superstitious plea to the universe.

But Matt only nodded and grabbed for a washcloth near the bath, plunging it into the water and then holding it slightly to his right to offer it to him. Foggy took it and after a second, sighing, leaned over to start washing away the most prominent of the smoke stains on his face. Somewhere lost in the midst of it were more apologies, but it wasn’t long before Matt was leaning against the side of the tub, somewhere between relief and sorrow. It didn’t take as long as expected to clean the stains away, but the smell continued to linger. It was this ridiculous thing—the middle of the night, both of them periodically short of breath and clawing for normality. And then there was Foggy, leaning over the side of the bath smoke-drenched himself but washing Matt’s hair of the stuff, trying not to feel insane about it. He’d mutter things like _lean back_ and _close your eyes, okay?_ and _good job_ like he was placating a dying man.

After a time the water was dark and murky, and they ran the faucet a while longer until Matt was rinsed. Foggy went to go get him clothes, this time grabbing a shirt he liked and a pair of sweatpants and then for good measure a sweatshirt, because the rest of the house was so damned _cold._ When he brought them back, Matt was wrapped in a towel by the heater. He didn’t look content, exactly, but didn’t look bereft either. Just… tired, maybe. “Hey, put these on,” Foggy told him, setting the clothes down beside him.

“Thanks.” He reached out, then, and Foggy flinched back and away.

“No, no. Don’t… don’t touch me, I’m all kinds of fucked up.” He tried to force humour into his voice, but instead he remained unsteady. “Whole outfit’s ruined. And I look like I took a dust bath in a fireplace.” It wasn’t funny, and that much was obvious. Matt didn’t try to laugh or even to smile.

“You… should probably get cleaned up, too,” Matt said, having pulled the shirt on and looking slightly less uncomfortable for doing so. “Are you okay?”

“M’fine,” Foggy said, again clearing his throat and wincing at the sensation. “I’ll… yeah. I’ll take a shower or something. Don’t want to stain the tub.”

Matt frowned at the implication that statement carried, but didn’t say anything about it, instead opting to curl closer to the heater as he held the sweatshirt in his arms. “I’ve got, uh… got a huge Columbia hoodie somewhere in there you can wear.”

“Huge?” Foggy echoed, trying to sound faux-offended but sort of laughing. It sounded appropriately off-kilter for him to find that amusing, in the midst of all of it. He could live with being the optimist here.

“I mean—I just mean it’d probably fit you, it’s too big for me.”

“Yeah, okay, asshole,” he said, resisting the urge to push him. “See if I save you from any more burning buildings.” That got Matt to smile, at least, and it put Foggy a little more at ease—even if his throat and chest were still burning like hell. He paused a second near the door. “... Are you gonna stay in here?”

“Yeah,” said Matt, without any move to indicate he found that strange.

“Oh. Okay. Only fair, I guess.” Foggy slipped out, trying to make sure not to open the door too much and let the heat escape from the room. He dug through the pajama drawer of Matt’s dresser until he found the hoodie, which was indeed definitely too big for Matt. He supposed he would just have to deal with it. If he’d known he would be doing volunteer firefighter work tonight, maybe he would’ve brought a change of clothes.

The slight nerves that came from undressing with Matt there in the room were only overcome by the fact that he had a brief coughing fit which left him spitting thick, chemical-tasting black gunk into the sink. He supposed that was a lot worse than the embarrassment of having to shower with someone else in the room. It didn’t mitigate the further embarrassment of that coughing fit happening several more times over the course of the shower.

* * *

Throughout the next hour they sat by the heater in the bathroom, drinking water and breathing in the warm air. Neither of them were without some issue considering how much smoke they’d breathed in, but it seemed Matt had gotten by easier than Foggy had worried. He quietly explained what had happened, why he’d gone in—and while Matt wasn’t any happier with him for trying to be a hero, he had calmed down a little. He was worried, which was always a pain in the ass coming from him. Matt was worried like a freight train was heavy, and watching him tense up every time Foggy coughed was starting to drive him crazy. Sure, he was doing the same thing, but he was justified. It made sense.

The heater continued humming between them. “I don’t think I can go home,” Foggy admitted, staring into it.

Matt was quiet for a minute, and he considered that maybe he just wouldn’t answer. Finally, he said, “Don’t. Maybe you shouldn’t, so I can keep an eye on you—”

“So I can keep an eye on you,” Foggy was saying at the same time, and they both acknowledged this, went quiet and still in it. “Uh, you _can’t_ keep an eye on me,” Foggy corrected with weak amusement. Matt snorted and batted at his shoulder. “Sorry. Just saying.”

“You’re awful,” said Matt, not meaning it at all. Between them was still this thing—the leftover fear, adrenaline and smoke had all been washed away, and now they were alone with what had happened. Separately they were also both agonizing over what could’ve gone wrong, and maybe they knew it, but how do you acknowledge something like that? How do you let it be?

It was a while once again before anyone said anything, and it was Matt saying, “I’m… exhausted.” He sounded it, and Foggy nodded before realising he had done so and letting out a quiet affirmative noise in its place.

“You should sleep,” he said.

“What about you?” asked Matt, and all it evoked was when he’d asked that question back in the fire. Foggy had been almost furious with him for it. Now it just made him feel sad, and maybe lonely. “I can take the couch, if you…”

“I think I’d just freak out,” he replied too quickly, and was unable to mitigate it. “Just. I thought you were dead or dying or that I would see you die.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “Sorry.” He reached out and put a hand on Foggy’s shoulder, then after thinking about it momentarily, left it there. He let it slide down his arm to his wrist and then leaned against him, closing his eyes. “We can… not. Not be separate, I mean.”

“You sure?” Foggy had leaned back a little, created a kind of equilibrium between them. In honesty, he didn’t really want to leave the heater—but he did want to be under blankets and in a bed.

“I’m sure.”

* * *

It was difficult to quantify how natural it felt, the two of them too close to each other in Matt’s bed. Foggy was staring up into the darkness of the room. There was some comfort in that darkness, though a part of him kept feeling like his eyes remembered the impossible brightness of the fire. He had not gotten away without some minor burns, probably just from the falling embers. Parts of his body still felt too warm as a result, but the rest of him would have felt freezing if not for Matt—Matt, who was practically half on top of him, his arms wrapped around him and his head resting on his chest. Over time his breathing had mellowed out, and that had been of some comfort. Still he seemed attentive now to something that Foggy didn’t understand. “What’re you thinking about?” He asked quietly, trying not to overstep, pressing his palm flat against Matt’s back.

It seemed briefly that he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “I’m, uh. Listening to your heartbeat.” There was reticence in his voice, embarrassment maybe. Foggy felt bad for wanting to laugh a little.

“Aren’t you, like… always?” He asked, wincing a little at the roughness of his own voice. They both sounded awful, both probably still looked awful. He was lucky he wasn’t looking.

“No,” Matt answered, seeing the humour in the thing and smiling a little. “I mean—it’s different. I just… like hearing it. That’s all.”

Foggy considered that and pulled him a little closer, caught between his desire not to make this step into the territory of being actually weird and his desire to _never_ let Matt go again. He knew this was in that grey area between friendship and... whatever else, this quiet limbo they had occupied sometimes in moments of dire need or injury or catastrophe. They were too close during times like this to quite reside in the realm of platonic friendship, but they’d also never discussed it, never talked about what that meant. Maybe for Matt it meant something other than ‘I’ve wanted to kiss you pretty much since college and you risking your life for stupid shit all the time made me realise I might actually love you,’ so he hadn’t crossed that boundary yet. He badly wanted to tonight.

Shaking the thought away, he asked, “You’re not going to stay up all night making sure my heart doesn’t stop like some kind of crazy person, are you?” He was poking fun, but it didn’t quite get all the way there.

“I was thinking about it,” Matt said, his voice completely even.

“Hey,” Foggy said quietly, this placating sort of sound that he didn’t expect to come out of his mouth. So maybe it had kind of broken his heart to hear Matt mean that. He squeezed him slightly. “Stop it. I’m okay. I’m… fucked up, but I’m okay. I’m worried about _you._ Don’t worry about me.”

“Too late.”

“I was scared too.” He finally gave in and let a hand rise to the back of Matt’s neck, fingers tracing up and into his hair. When Matt relaxed into his touch, he breathed out, ran a hand through his hair properly. “It’s okay. I know. C’mere.” And a second later Matt had buried his face in his shoulder, breathing deeply like he didn’t know he could breathe until just now. They were both unsteady, but Matt shook, and Foggy held him tighter. “I know, I know. I’ve got you, Matt. I’ve got you.”

Foggy had been concerned he might be over warmth forever after the fire, but Matt was the exception, curled around him somewhere between protective and being protected. If it weren’t for how terrible he still felt, it would be insane to think they’d been in that building earlier—now they were both clean and safe, the smoke washed from their hair, curled up in clean pajamas. It was somehow worse to think they had to have nearly died to get this close to each other, and he wasn’t an idiot, he could tell Matt might be thinking the same thing. But now wasn’t the time to talk about it, and the time to talk about it especially wasn’t half an hour later, when the stroking of his hair and the soft reassurances put Matt to sleep. Foggy felt him drift off and nearly breathed a sigh of relief. They were going to have to be okay. He closed his eyes and turned his head so his face was close enough to Matt’s that he could register little else but him, and he did his best to join him in sleep.


End file.
